Antioxidents and Conception.
Women undergoing fertility treatment often take dietary supplements, including antioxidents, to improve their chances of becoming pregnant. However, a study of over 3,500 women who attended fertility clinics found that antioxidents had no effect on conception, either in improving pregnancy rates of hindering them.
The Cochran Library, August 2013


In a recent statement, German financial watchdog BaFin announced that it had ordered Deutsche Bank to take specific measures to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing or risk facing fines.
BaFin and other watchdogs, including the US Federal Reserve, have repeatedly criticized the lender for deficiencies. Deutsche has been spending billions of euros in a campaign spanning several years to fill the persistent holes in its controls. According to a
Bloomberg report, its chief executive officer’s decision last year to once again step up investment on the issue was a key reason why the bank has missed several cost targets.
“We are fully aligned with BaFin on the necessary measures and have already completed a large proportion of them,” a Deutsche Bank spokesman said. “We have, and will continue, to invest the resources and management attention necessary to improve our control environment and to meet regulatory expectations.”
In our recent Deeper Dive,
The Costs of Misconduct, we discussed the difference between mis-conduct and poor-conduct. While much media coverage focuses on blatant rule-breaking and misconduct, many regulatory actions, such as those aimed at Deutsche, seek to address instances of poor conduct. If firms hope to manage culture and conduct risks effectively, understanding this distinction, along with the causes and possible solutions, will be essential.


What is a corn?
A corn is a bump located on the surface of the toes. It is characterized by thickening and hardening of the skin at the location where excessive pressure and friction are produced for a prolonged period.
Where does it come from?
Certain factors favour corn formation, including:
Poor weight distribution on the foot; Deformation of the toes (hammertoes, hallux valgus); Wearing shoes that are too short, too tight or too pointy
Treatment solutions Opt for a foot orthosis
A foot orthosis with a metatarsal dome helps uniformize the support points under the foot and offers more stability. A separator can be placed between the toes to reduce friction.
Choose an orthopedic shoe
It is recommended to wear an adapted shoe that respects the anatomy of the foot while eliminating pressure points and friction of the toes. The features to prefer are plenty of space in the forefoot without stitches and solid rear reinforcements.


Comments on Funding:
For individuals or sole proprietorships, the amount of the tax credit depends on how much you give and is calculated as 25% of the value of the qualifying donations. Applicants must also claim the qualifying donations under the charitable donations tax credit in the same year.
For corporations, the tax credit is equal to 25% of the corporation’s qualifying donations for the tax years ending after December 31, 2013, that the corporation claimed on Schedule 2, Charitable Donations and Gifts.
Eligibility:
An eligible person means:
A trust is not entitled to claim this tax credit.
A qualifying donation is:
An eligible community food program is a person or entity:
Other Things to Note: Individuals or a sole proprietors must fill a completed Form ON428, Ontario Tax, with their personal income tax and benefit return (T1 return). Those who file their return electronically, need to keep all their receipts and documents for six years. If they file a paper return, attach all official receipts for their qualifying donations to their paper return. Corporations claim the credit by filing a completed Schedule 2, Charitable Donations and Gifts, with their corporation income tax return (T2 return). Receipts do not have to be attached to the corporate income tax return. Applicants must keep all official receipts in case they are asked for them later during an audit.


Acts of mass violence, such as the mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California cause extreme disruption and can be distressful for individuals, families and communities. Those receiving assistance as well as those involved in disaster management efforts can be affected. Ongoing national media exposure creates a disaster "community" that extends far beyond the geographic region of the event. Individual and community strength can be enhanced by interventions that address critical behavioral health issues throughout response and recovery phases. Ideal interventions promote the evidence-based principles of Psychological First Aid (PFA), including: safety, calming, self- and community-efficacy, social connectedness, and a sense of hope/optimism. Information relevant to this event and links to succinct, actionable education fact sheets can be found below.
Common responses to disasters include distress reactions (insomnia, irritability, loss of safety, social isolation, blaming and scapegoating) and health risk behaviors (increased use of alcohol and tobacco, reduced attention to health care). For healthcare personnel, being alert to these reactions and behaviors, promptly identifying them, and providing interventions can reduce distress and improve functioning and may decrease the likelihood of ultimately developing mental disorders. Normalizing the reactions and offering anticipatory guidance about what to expect with symptoms over time, as well as when to get help and where to go, help people feel calm and enhance feelings of efficacy. The following resource(s) address this topic in further detail:
FACT SHEET: Helping Communities After Disasters
FACT SHEET: Coping with Stress After a Mass Shooting
Grief is a near universal experience for those directly impacted by mass violence, such as the shootings at the Borderline Bar & Grill. In the immediate aftermath, some will lose loved ones or suffer injuries themselves. Many will experience increased fear and reduced feelings of safety. Loss of control and life routine often compound feelings of grief. Community leaders, those leading disaster management efforts, and healthcare providers can help affected individuals by gently inquiring about, acknowledging and then allowing individuals to process grief. Grief support also involves addressing feelings of loss, mourning losses, and fears about the future. Anxiety about the future is best managed through “problem solving” (supporting people in connecting with practical help when available). Being sensitive to the need for rituals, such as memorial and funerals, to support expressions of grief allow for healing, which ultimately strengthen communities. The following resource(s) address this topic in further detail:
FACT SHEET: Helping People After a Loss
FACT SHEET: Grief Leadership in the Wake of Tragedies
FACT SHEET: Leadership in Disasters & Lessons Learned
Special populations may be more vulnerable than others and warrant unique considerations. Such populations include: children, women, cognitively and mobility impaired, pre-existing mental health conditions, first responders and public health emergency workers (including volunteers). Children will need support and monitoring at home and at school. Partnering with community leaders, healthcare organizations, and local schools create opportunities for to provide education and resources as well as support community efforts to reduce distress and enhance well-being. Focused interventions can more quickly and effectively address the unique needs of these populations. The following resource(s) address this topic in further detail:
FACT SHEET: How Families Can Help Children
FACT SHEET: How Schools Can Help Students
Risk and crisis communication are a critical behavioral health intervention following a community disaster. For those leading disaster management efforts, understanding what to say and what not to say, when and how to say it are important elements. Basic principles include being clear and succinct; stating what is known and unknown; indicating when you do not know the answer, committing to following up at a specific time and then doing so; avoid lying or efforts to be overly reassuring as these erode trust. Effective communication following a disaster can reduce distress and enhance well-being for affected communities. The following resource(s) address this topic in further detail:
FACT SHEET: Leadership Communication During Crisis
Workplace and organization management following a disaster is an important part of restoring community functioning. In addition to financial support, workplaces and organizations often provides a sense of meaning and social connectedness. Effective support for personnel can enhance functioning for both the individuals and the affected workplace or organization. The following resource(s) address this topic in further detail:
Additional detailed resources can further knowledge about effective preparedness, response, and recovery measures. Some are brief while others are more detailed. Reading more detailed resources, such as books about disasters, during an actual disaster response is not likely to happen. However, as the initial response slows a bit, these offer much more in depth treatments of key topics to consider, which may assist with immediate response and recovery and enhance preparedness for future events. Links to additional websites, fact sheets, articles, and books can be found below:


What Is PRP?
Plasma is a part of your blood that contains unique "factors," or proteins, that help your blood to clot. It also includes proteins that support cell growth. Scientists have produced PRP by separating plasma from blood and concentrating it.
The idea is that injecting PRP into damaged tissues will stimulate your body to grow new, healthy cells and promote healing. Because the tissue growth factors are more concentrated in the prepared growth injections, researchers think the body's tissues may heal faster.
What are the purposes of PRP injections?
Scientists are trying out PRP injections across a variety of applications. Examples of these include:
Hair loss. Doctors have injected PRP into the scalp to promote hair growth and prevent hair loss. According to research from 2014, PRP injections work in treating androgenic alopecia, also referred to as male pattern baldness. Tendon injuries. Tendons are tough, thick bands of tissue that connect muscle to bone. They are typically slow to heal after injury. Doctors have used PRP injections to treat chronic tendon issues, such as tennis elbow, Achilles tendonitis at the ankle, and jumper's knee, which creates pain in the patellar tendon in the knee. Acute injuries. Doctors have used PRP injections to treat acute sports injuries, such as pulled hamstring muscles or knee sprains. Postsurgical repair. Sometimes physicians use PRP injections after surgery to repair a torn tendon (such as a rotator cuff tendon in the shoulder) or ligaments (such as the anterior cruciate ligament). Osteoarthritis. PRP injections in the knee may help people with osteoarthritis. A 2015 study found that PRP injections were more successful than hyaluronic acid injections (a traditional treatment) for treating osteoarthritis. However, the trial was a small group of 160 people, so larger trials are needed for this to be definitive. How do you prepare for PRP injections?
There are few steps to preparing for PRP injections. These steps depend on how you get PRP.
PRP can be injected in different ways. For instance, occasionally a topical numbing lidocaine solution is applied to your scalp before injection. You may need to arrive early to a therapy session if this is the case.
Other times, a local anesthetic is combined with the PRP to minimize any discomfort. Sometimes, Dr. Williamson will inject or apply PRP during surgery. In this instance, preparation for PRP injections would involve following your surgeon's recommendations before surgery.
You'll likely need to quit taking particular medications that thin your blood, like aspirin and ibuprofen, before you receive PRP injections. You may also have to take a break from particular vitamins or supplements, such as omega-3 fatty acids. Dr. Williamson can inform you exactly what you need to do to prepare for these shots.
PRP doesn't normally cause significant side effects. But since it involves drawing blood, if Dr. Williamson recommends it - you'll want to be sure you eat before the procedure. That will help you avoid feeling lightheaded when you receive PRP injections.
You can't receive PRP injections if you have:
Abnormal platelet function or a low platelet count Anemia Cancer An infection PRP injection procedure
Here's what to anticipate from a typical PRP injection procedure:
A healthcare professional will draw a sample of your blood. The amount of the sample depends on where the PRP will be injected. For instance, the amount of blood taken for injection into the scalp for one study was 20 milliliters. This is a little larger than one teaspoon. The blood is placed into a centrifuge. This machine spins around very fast, causing the blood components to separate. The separation process takes about 15 minutes. A technologist takes the separated plasma and prepares it for injection into the affected area. Physicians will commonly use imaging, such as ultrasound, to identify particular areas for injection, such as the tendon. Dr. Williamson will then inject the PRP into the affected area. What are the possible side effects of PRP?
Since PRP involves injecting a substance into the skin, there are potential side effects.
PRP is autologous, which means it contains substances that come straight from your own body. This minimizes the risks for an allergic reaction that can happen from injecting other medications, such as cortisone or hyaluronic acid. However, there are risks from the injection itself, including:
infection nerve injuries pain at the injection site tissue damage
You should discuss these possible risks with Dr. Williamson, along with the steps they will take to minimize these risks.
What is the recovery time for PRP injections?
When PRP is injected after an injury, Dr. Williamson might suggest that you rest the affected area. However, these recommendations are more related to the injury and less to the PRP injections. Most people can continue their day-to-day activities following PRP injections.
Because PRP injections are meant to promote healing or growth, you might not notice an immediate difference after receiving the injections. However, in several weeks or months, the area might start healing quicker or growing more hair than you would have expected if you had not received PRP injections.
For more information about Dr. Linette's practice and PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) in El Cajon, California, contact us at 760-875-2627 or visit our website at LinetteWilliamson.com and schedule your appointment today!


Lessons as a First-Time Condo Owner
Professionals who work in the condo industry often say they'd never buy a condo. I was no different. A large part of my day is spent dealing with the problems faced by condos, such as disputes between neighbours, financial concerns, construction defects. I didn't want to spend my time at home dealing with the same issues. It has been about 10 weeks since I moved into my first condo and I've been pleasantly surprised! The community is great. The neighbourhood is wonderful. The condo is well managed. No disputes. No financial concerns. No defects. We love our new home! Being a condo owner has changed my perspective. I've learned a few lessons being an owner that I never would have learned as a condo lawyer. I thought I'd share them with you today.
Sometimes it is easy to violate the rules.I read the documents before I purchased, again before I moved in, and after we moved in. And you know what? I still inadvertently violated a rule within the first week of moving in. Oops! Fortunately, it wasn't a major infraction and it was easily corrected. Topics that seem trivial are meaningful to the owners.I'll admit it. I've sat in on AGMs and thought "why are they arguing about this?" when the owners are debating something seemingly trivial, like the length of the grass or the watering schedule for the gardens. It never really sunk in before, but the condo is someone's home. The issues aren't trivial to them. It is easy to be indifferent.I regularly hear about condos without quorum at their AGMs or a vacancy on the board because no one will run. How can owners have so much apathy when it involves their largest asset? Turns out it is easier than I thought. I attended the AGM, but I wasn't about to run for a position on the board. Who has time for that?!? I would have been more inclined if it wasn't so well managed. Maybe directors shouldn't take offense when no one steps up. Maybe it is because they are doing a great job.


According to a study published in Frontiers, Pacific Islands are always described as vulnerable to climate change, and they lack adaptation strategies to cope with it.
However, this description overlooks what Pacific Islanders are doing to adapt through their traditional practices combining it with scientific knowledge to help implement locally relevant climate solutions.
This lack of appreciation for Pacific Islander’s leadership in climate change adaptation is made worse by the biases in climate research favouring Western science and technological solutions over other knowledge systems, the study says.
The study highlights the importance of supporting and recognising these local adaptation strategies that Pacific Islanders led apart from global climate policy and national governments.
These locally-led, ecosystem-based adaptations (EBA) are rooted in traditional knowledge, reinforced and supported by climate science, traditional leadership structures, and sustainable climate solutions, which can improve the communities resilience and ecosystems health, according to the study.
Ecosystem-Based strategies
The paper presents local ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) examples that reinforce the critical role of ecosystems in climate adaptation that primarily benefits food security, water security, and coastal protection.
These EBA strategies are also projects implemented through the support of governments and NGOs across Micronesia and Melanesia from 2015 to 2018, which includes the following:
Revitalising traditional wells
Freshwater security in coastal areas is affected by a combination of factors such as coastal flooding, high tide events, drought, and saltwater intrusion, and pollution. To improve water quality and reduce environmental impacts and pollution, residents have rehabilitated traditional water wells by cleaning them and planting vegetation to protect them from sedimentation and contamination.
These actions also support national water policies on good watershed management for sustainable use and conservation of water resources.
Implementing Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA)
An integrated approach to managing cropland, livestock, forests, and fisheries designed to support food security under climate change. CSA includes applying agroforestry, experimenting with salt and drought-tolerant crops.
Though the support from the government and NGOs, coastal communities who rely heavily on fishing are encouraged to plant household gardens, introducing new farming practices, and low-cost aquaculture projects designed to improve their food security
Implementation of Protected Areas
The Municipality of Tamil in Micronesia suffers from flooding, erosion, and salter water intrusion affecting their crop production. The municipality also has poor water management and lacks alternative water sources, which has increased their reliance on the watershed. The municipality’s coastal ecosystems health and the fish population is also on the decline.
Problems in water security have led the community to declare their first Watershed Protected Area in 2017 to protect 320 acres of watersheds aimed to improve water security and coastal ecosystem health.
In the island of Chuuk of Oneisomw, the community implemented a marine protection area and enforced a seasonal and longer closure of reef areas.
These climate actions are based on scientific knowledge to protect their coral reefs against dynamite fishing, overfishing, and other damaging activities and ensure that future generations can still access coral reef resources.
The community is also developing a plan to design ridge-to-reef protected areas to prevent pollution runoff and maintain water quality.
These strategies show that western and traditional approaches can be complementary and mutually beneficial to meet conservation, resilience, and sustainability goals.
Climate-Smart Development Plans include updating current infrastructure, designated upland lease development for migrating vulnerable community members and infrastructure away from the coast, and recommendations to make future development less vulnerable to climate impacts. Challenges to implementing strategies
The study identified challenges to implementing these strategies such as the remoteness of the islands, lack of capacity to implement and sustain projects, lack of governance and the way that impact is measured, which highlights the need for and importance of supportive national policies and political will to reinforce and scale up these efforts.
To read the entire study, click the link below:
Source Citation:
Mcleod E, Bruton-Adams M, Förster J, Franco C, Gaines G, Gorong B, James R, Posing-Kulwaum G, Tara M and Terk E (2019) Lessons From the Pacific Islands – Adapting to Climate Change by Supporting Social and Ecological Resilience.
Front. Mar. Sci. 6:289. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2019.00289 PHOTO CREDIT:
Micronesia by User: Kahuroa – Outline: File:World2Hires filled mercator.svg; Map information based on Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors – the discovery and settlement of the Pacific, ed K.R. Howe, 2008, p57., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61904861
Romanum Island, Chuuk, Micronesia by Euniceminjeong – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48907873


As part our project supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, we have developed guidelines on collection development for social media archiving programs. We are pleased to present this resource, “Building Social Media Archives: Collection Development Guidelines”.
Although there are many technical methods for collecting social media, these guidelines are particularly concerned with approaches that capture the underlying data behind social media platforms, via platforms’ APIs. Such approaches present both a powerful potential for documenting a record of our cultural heritage, as well as a challenging set of legal, ethical, technical, and programmatic needs and norms.
This document seeks to surface issues potentially facing cultural heritage institutions and guide those institutions through a series of questions to consider and, where appropriate, to develop explicit policies to address these issues.
Development of the guidelines was led by Christie Peterson, Vakil Smallen, Rachel Trent, with contributions from Elisabeth Kaplan, Dan Kerchner, Justin Littman, and Laura Wrubel.
We welcome your feedback via email to sfm@gwu.edu or reply to us on Twitter at @SocialFeedMgr.


There are a variety of reasons why people choose to live with a roommate, but the most common cause is financial stability. The cost of living compared to the minimum wage in certain states is steep for many individuals, so they have to rely on sharing financial responsibilities with others.
This is where taking on a roommate comes in handy...
College students are a group of individuals who consistently look to find cheaper alternatives, especially for a student’s car insurance living away from home. So it is no surprise they thrive off the idea of sharing their financial responsibilities by finding roommates.
But, you may not realize there are
few legal rights if you are a roommate without a lease. What makes someone a tenant?
Generally, when a person pays rent or agrees to live somewhere, they are considered a tenant. However, the term “pay” can be interpreted differently. One can pay in the form of money, labor, or by giving other things. Without an agreement, if the supposed tenant has never paid or given something of value in return for a place to live, then they are not considered a tenant. All of which applies even if a person is only using a part of a home or sleeping on a couch.
Alternatively, despite it being simple to be considered a tenant, an individual may have limited protection under specific state housing laws if the primary tenant lives in a privately-owned building, and only one person has signed the lease. Situations as such can make it difficult to resolve conflicts with a roommate on your own.
Different states have variations to their housing laws, so a potential tenant must research their specific state’s conditions before agreeing to move in with a roommate.
In most cases, tenants do not have a right to a roommate if they live in public housing or if the lease does not give the tenant permission to live with someone else.
Though, it can be challenging to evict a roommate in many states if a tenant has lived in the home for at least 30 days (even if the tenant has never paid rent), have a valid lease (or a roommate agreement) signed by both parties, or the primary tenant of the home has accepted rent from you.
Difference Between a Subtenant, Co-Tenant, and Master Tenant
When deciphering your rights as a roommate without a lease, it is essential to understand what a subtenant, co-tenant, and a master tenant are. As stated above, someone may have limited protection when considering a specific state’s housing laws, and when comprehending your role within the interpretation of those laws,
it is crucial to understand these three titles fully. A master tenant is a person who entered a written or oral contract with a landlord, and this individual is responsible for collecting rent from subtenants and paying it to the landlord. The co-tenant serves a similar function as the master tenant since they too have a direct relationship with the landlord as they pay rent directly to the landlord and have signed a lease agreement. In contrast, the subtenant has no association with the landlord and instead pays money to either the master tenant or co-tenant. What are the rent limitations?
So you are not taken advantage of when renting with a roommate, it helps to know what the rent limitations are within your area of residence. You can find this information with a quick search online, but as a rule of thumb, if you live in an area that has minimal market-rate regulations, then a roommate could be charged with no limit.
On the other hand,
within a regulated market-rate area, master tenants cannot legally charge more than a proportionate share of the rent. The most they could charge is up to half of the total rent for the home. Areas that are not regulated (which is rare) or have minimal regulation can charge a disproportionate amount of rent without it being illegal, even though it may be unfair. The Process of Evicting Someone with No Lease
Based on whether someone is considered a tenant, the person attempting to evict the other may have to go through the courts to do so. If someone is viewed as a tenant based on one of the reasons listed above, they cannot merely kick someone out of the property.
In many cases, even without a lease, a person could be given a judgment for wrongful eviction and have to pay out a large sum of money to the roommate if they attempt to remove them from the property without going through the court.
The roommate could even go as far as suing for living costs while they were out of the property, lost or stolen personal property, pain and suffering, or even for acting maliciously and recklessly.
The process of evicting a roommate varies depending on how the lease expressively explains the rules and regulations of having a roommate. If the lease gives a tenant permission to act as a “master tenant,” they can go through the courts directly to start the eviction process.
Alternatively, if the lease does not grant permission for subtenants or the roommate is a tenant who has a direct relationship with the landlord, they would have to go through the landlord and request they start the eviction process.
However, if the landlord is unaware of the roommate because it was not permitted within the lease, then
both parties living within the home could face eviction because it is a breach of contract, which is one of many legal risks of renting with a roommate. In Conclusion: Always Read the Original Lease
Beyond the definitions given above for a tenant, you can always figure out if your presence within a property is legally abiding based on the wording within the original lease with the landlord. This is why you should request access to the lease before entering a roommate agreement with an individual.
If possible,
you should even request to have direct access to the landlord to avoid conflicts with the roommate in the future. Most importantly, though, you should know the federal government protects all tenants from discrimination due to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability under the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act extends beyond leasing to include advertising, preventing landlords from marketing their properties to specific groups of people.
So if you find yourself facing a conflict with a roommate about one of the reasons associated with the Fair Housing Act, you are legally protected and can pursue legal remedies.


Imagine having a peaceful, playful relationship with your food.
A connection so deep, you know intuitively what food to reach for – because you know it’ll nourish you.
I want this for you. Imagine honoring the wisdom planted in your body over the years.
Recognizing your ancestral traditions; tuning into your hunger pangs and cravings; and respecting your body’s fiercely graceful evolution.
I want this for you. Imagine savoring every whiff, crumb, flavor and texture you consume.
Salivating at unexpected aromas and astonishing yourself with the full-bodied sensations that come from food.
I want this for you. Imagine…
…slowing down to enjoy your food.
…listening to and TRUSTING your body’s internal signals.
…throwing out your weighing scale.
…ditching calorie-counting and macro-tracking.
…eating exactly what you want, when you want – without feeling like shit.
I want this, and more – for you. That’s why I created “Mindful Eating: Pause & Nourish.” A 5-week beginner’s course to slowing down, savoring your food and trusting your body. Runs October 27 – December 1, 2022. Mindful eating is the practice of becoming fully present while eating…with curiosity, loving kindness, and zero judgement. The benefits are infinite: improved digestion/gut-health, lower stress levels, decreased overeating, a deeper connection with your food and body and more! It’s the gift that keeps on giving; the more you practice. But don’t take my word for it, sign up – and practice with me!
During this course, you’ll practice: slowing down and using all your senses to connect with your food; becoming present and eating with curiosity and no judgement; tapping into your internal hunger and fullness cues; and offering your body gratitude, compassion and loving kindness. We’ll practice virtually, as a group – once a week.
For 5 weeks, we’ll meet for 1 hour on Zoom (see dates below).
I’ll guide you through a brief eating meditation, introduce a new concept (for example, “rest-and-digest,” types of hunger, tapping into your internal hunger and fullness cues, gratitude & self-compassion) – and we’ll reflect on new learnings.
And every week, you’ll receive prompts and exercises to support and reinforce your personal mindful eating practice.
The classes will be offered at 6pm Pacific Time on the following Thursdays: Thurs, October 27, 2022 | 6-7pm PT Thurs, November 3, 2022 | 6-7pm PT Thurs, November 10, 2022 | 6-7pm PT Thurs, November 17, 2022 | 6-7pm PT Thurs, December 1, 2022 | 6-7pm PT(We’ll skip the week of Thanksgiving)
The sessions will be recorded and available for replay.
Cost: $197 Early bird: $150 if you register by October 23, 2022
xo – Mux
Hi, I’m Mukta Gadkari.
A board-certified holistic nutrition consultant and coach; I support my clients with mindful eating, digestive/gut health and blood sugar balance.
I teach you how to nourish yourself.
Want to learn more about working with me? Email me at mukta@muxcooks.com.


Hospitals in Drenthe are being forced to postpone some procedures, including serious operations, because of a material and equipment shortage. Sources indicate that the Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupted global shipments, is one of the key issues responsible for the situation.
“If only one of the parts of a prosthesis is not available during a knee operation, the entire operation cannot go ahead,” said Erwin Kikkers, a representative of the Treant hospital group (Emmen, Hoogeveen, Stadskanaal), as reported by RTV Drenthe. Kikkers notes that operations have already been delayed across Treant hospitals because of the shortage.
The shortages, according to Xander Koolman, a health economist from the Vrije University, are partially caused by delays in shipping from manufacturers in China. The delays themselves are a direct result of frequent Covid-19 lockdowns across Chinese cities. Dutch hospitals, which rely heavily on equipment from China, as such, suffer as a result.
“The Netherlands has a system of private hospitals. It is often not profitable for these hospitals to build up large stocks because storage costs money. This works well in times of economic stability but can lead to problems during wars and epidemics,” explained Koolman, as reported by Trouw.
While Covid-19, and specifically ongoing lockdowns in China, was cited as a key cause for the issue, Jan Eisen, head of purchasing at Wilhelmina Hospital Assen, suggests that a plethora of issues have contributed to the equipment and material shortage. Namely, a scarcity of raw materials due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, tight EU regulations resulting in lower availability of certain products, and the weakened state of the Euro which makes international transactions expensive.
“It takes some getting used to. We’ve never had this problem before,” said Eisen, as reported by RTV Drenthe. While Eisen is hesitant to deem the situation a crisis, he does refer to the shortage as “problematic.”
While the shortage seems to be affecting many hospitals in the northern provinces, representatives are hesitant to call the situation a crisis. Kikkers cites that, despite the shortage, the vast majority of procedures and operations have been able to proceed without any delays. There have also, thus far, been no calls for a national overview regarding the shortage.
While the immediate situation is seemingly under control, hospitals across the northern provinces remain wary of the shortage, which, according to RTV Drenthe, seems set to continue for quite some time.


Aditya Kusupati Gantavya Bhatt Aniket Rege Matthew Wallingford Aditya Sinha Vivek Ramanujan William Howard-Snyder Kaifeng Chen Sham Kakade Prateek Jain Ali Farhadi Abstract
Learned representations are a central component in modern ML systems, serving a multitude of downstream tasks. When training such representations, it is often the case that computational and statistical constraints for each downstream task are unknown. In this context rigid, fixed capacity representations can be either over or under-accommodating to the task at hand. This leads us to ask: can we design a flexible representation that can adapt to multiple downstream tasks with varying computational resources? Our main contribution is Matryoshka Representation Learning (MRL) which encodes information at different granularities and allows a single embedding to adapt to the computational constraints of downstream tasks. MRL minimally modifies existing representation learning pipelines and imposes no additional cost during inference and deployment. MRL learns coarse-to-fine representations that are at least as accurate and rich as independently trained low-dimensional representations. The flexibility within the learned Matryoshka Representations offer: (a) up to 14x smaller embedding size for ImageNet-1K classification at the same level of accuracy; (b) up to 14x real-world speed-ups for large-scale retrieval on ImageNet-1K and 4K; and (c) up to 2% accuracy improvements for long-tail few-shot classification, all while being as robust as the original representations. Finally, we show that MRL extends seamlessly to web-scale datasets (ImageNet, JFT) across various modalities -- vision (ViT, ResNet), vision + language (ALIGN) and language (BERT). MRL code and pretrained models are open-sourced at https://github.com/RAIVNLab/MRL.


There are various changes that a mother goes through at the time of pregnancy. A healthy diet will play a vital role in facing those changes and maintaining the overall health of the mother.
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This past weekend, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officially announced their recommendation that children aged six months through five years of age can now get the COVID-19 vaccine.
This announcement follows the FDA’s recommendation of administering either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to this young group.
While only approximately 3% of COVID cases in the States are in that age group, hospitalization is higher than that of older children.
COVID has been responsible for 400 deaths of children aged one to four, and may possibly be linked to the surprising outbreak of hepatitis that has been recently been reported in children.
Both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are the same formula as the adult vaccines, just in smaller doses. Both are effective at combating the virus and both have similar side effects that may cause drowsiness, pain at the injection site and mild fevers. Even if a child has already contracted COVID, experts suggest still vaccinating them seeing as how immunity decreases over time.
COVID-19 shots for children are available to schedule at pediatricians’ offices, children’s hospitals and local pharmacies.


Successful real estate investors do not depend solely on the advice of others. Once they have identified a potential real estate investment, smart investors study the rental property’s income, expenses, cash flow, rates of return, and profit. Whatever the overly enthusiastic agents or sellers claim, it is important to know that real estate investing involves verifying the numbers. The real […]


Major welfare reform is nearing the governor’s desk. Three bills, two in the Senate and one in House, contain significant improvements to our human service programs.
SB 6 protects recipients of food stamps and TANF. Sponsored by Sen. Mike Regan, the bill, also known as the Public Assistance Integrity Act, limits welfare benefits for drug felons and non-compliant sex offenders. It also counts large lottery winnings as income and increases the penalties for those who commit welfare fraud.
With a lengthy waiting list for home and community-based services, lawmakers should take this opportunity to protect our limited resources for eligible recipients.
The first bill prohibits the Department of Human Services (DHS) from requesting food stamp work requirement waivers without approval of the General Assembly. Despite a statewide unemployment rate of 4.1 percent—the lowest in nearly 50 years—59 counties in Pennsylvania are exempt from work requirements due to “high unemployment” thanks to creative math from DHS.
HB 2138 instructs Pennsylvania to request permission from the federal government to create a part-time work requirement for healthy adults without young children on Medicaid. More than 10 states are pursuing a work-first approach for healthy adults using Medicaid.
We know the greatest anti-poverty measure isn't an expanded Medicaid program or broader food stamp eligibility—it's a job. Together, these bills will encourage thousands of healthy Pennsylvanians to focus on work and raise their incomes, and ultimately, their quality of life.
Regardless of what the governor decides, the clamor for welfare reform is loud and sweeping. With two-thirds of Pennsylvanians supporting policies like Medicaid work requirements, it's only a matter of time before these policies become a reality.


Increasing the sales tax from 9.5% to 10.25% is before the voters in Palmdale on the Nov. 3 ballot in the form of Measure AV.
Palmdale, home to about 157,000 people in the Antelope Valley, faces serious economic challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and an economic downturn threatening essential services in the high desert city.
Those services include quick emergency response, senior support and health protocols, repairing streets, addressing homelessness, retaining local businesses, protecting local water sources and maintaining community programs.
The city faces significantly lower revenue projections over the next few years even though prudent belt-tightening measures are in place.
As a result, the City Council is putting Measure AV, Palmdale Essential Services Protection Measure, before the voters.
If approved it is projected to generate about $12 million annually, with 100% venue staying within the city limits. Currently, the city receives 1% of the 9.75% tax that’s levied on purchases within its limits for its general fund.
The tax would be paid only not by residents, but also those who work, visit or shop in Palmdale and that money would remain in the city under local control.
Essential purchases such as groceries, prescription medicine and other essential purchases, rent and utilities, are exempt from sales tax.
On a purchase of $50, for example, the increase would be 38 cents, or for a $100 purchase, an increase of 75 cents.
Measure AV would keep Palmdale’s sales tax rate comparable to neighboring cities, including Lancaster and Quartz Hill, city leaders say.
While some concerns over a disadvantage to local auto dealers have been expressed, city officials argue no competitive disadvantage would attach to those businesses because sales tax on vehicles are calculated based on where the vehicle’s owner lives, not the city where it is purchased.
City officials pointed to the fact they have helped Palmdale auto dealers increase their competitive edge, by providing a $500 incentive for local, new vehicle purchases and $250 incentive for used car purchases through its Operation Jump Start program.


THE National Examinations Council (NECO) has sought for collaboration with the Department of State Services (DSS) to check malpractice in the conduct of the Council’s examination.
Chairman, Governing Board of NECO, Abubakar Saddique who led the Acting Registrar and other management team on a courtesy visit to the Director-General of DSS in Abuja, said such collaboration would ensure the credibility of the Council’s examination.
A statement issued on Thursday by Azeez Sani, spokesperson of NECO quoted Saddique as explaining that the Council has put in place measures aimed at checking examination malpractice, but noted that without adequate security architecture, such measures would not yield the desired results.
He stated that among the measures introduced is the biometric capturing of candidates to check impersonation at examination centres.
The chairman therefore appealed to the personnel of DSS to strengthen their collaboration with NECO to prevent any form of malpractice before, during and after the conduct of the Council examination.
The Acting Registrar of NECO, Abubakar Gana, in his remarks, enumerated some reforms introduced under his leadership in the Council to include the development of an intractable, robust, secure and user-friendly corporate website, introduction of full-scale biometric capturing of candidates at examination centres, procurement of additional 20 pick-up Hilux Vans for examination logistics and full payment of Duty Tour Allowance to staff among others.
Gana noted that NECO has enjoyed the full support and co-operation of DSS through the provision of covert operations which had helped in reducing incidence of examination malpractice.
He opined that “the world is experiencing rapid changes resulting from rapid development, these changes revolve around two major phenomena of emerging Technology and Globalization.”
According to him, while these two phenomena have their advantages, they also come with disadvantages, especially when abused resulting in the scourge of examination malpractice assuming a global dimension.
The Acting Registrar also sought for the collaboration of DSS in building an intractable open and secure filing system for the Council to prevent possible incidence of tempering with staff records, especially in the face of the on-going Staff Certificate verification exercise.
Gana appealed to the Director-General to ensure that fraudsters who attempt to compromise NECO examinations are not only arrested and investigated, but prosecuted to serve as deterrent to others.
The Director-General, Yusuf Bichi, in his address, pledged the continued support of his Department in ensuring the credibility of NECO examinations.


In this submission we emphasise the need for clear targets, not only for greenhouse gas emissions but also for carbon sequestration and storage. These can be achieved via mechanisms such as Cap and Share and a Carbon Maintenance Fee, described in detail in the Feasta climate group's book Sharing for Survival. We also urge the Commission to end its support for the continued exploitation of fossil fuel sources.


A traditional Japanese sword isn't complete just because the blade has been forged, the metal cooled and the mud removed. Polishing is a critical step in finalizing a sword. To learn more about polishing Japanese swords and how it's done, keep reading.
#1) There's a Specialist Who Polishes Swords
It's not the swordsmith who polishes the swords. Instead, there's a specialist known as a
togishi who's responsible for this task. In the old days, the togishi traditionally used three types of stone to polish a sword. Today, however, togishis use more than a half dozen. #2) Polishing Takes Time... Lots of Time
You might assume that polishing a Japanese sword is a quick and easy process, requiring just a few minutes to complete. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. In most cases, polishing takes longer than actually forging the blade, with a typical polishing job taking about 2 to 3 weeks. It's a time-consuming and methodical process, which is why there's a specialist who's given this task.
#3) Poor Polishing can Ruin the Blade
Polishing the sword helps to improve the blade's clarity and aesthetics. However, a bad polish can have some serious effects on the sword, potentially even damaging or ruining it. If the togishi alters the blade's geometry and/or wears down the steel too much, it can destroy the sword's function and value.
#4) Glazing
One of the processes in polishing a traditional Japanese sword is glazing, which involves the use of fine-grain polishing stones to achieve a mirror finish on the cutting edge. For the blunt edge of the sword, however, the togishi strives for a matte finish to make the hamon more visible and appealing.
#5) Polishing Provides 'Insight' into the Sword's Production
A well-polished Japanese sword can reveal a variety of information about the way in which it was produced. For instance, it reveals how fast (or slow) the cutting edge was cooled; at what temperature the blade was cooled; and even the carbon content of the steel itself. Of course, these findings are only visible in well-polished blades. If the blade was not polished or poorly polished, you can't identify these characteristics.
#6) All Polish Must Be Removed
One the sword has been fully polished, the togishi must remove any trade amounts of the oil. Even small amounts can harm the blade by promoting rust and corrosion. Salts within the polishing oil provide ideal breeding grounds for mold and mildew, which can in turn lead to corrosion.


Acid-extrusion from tissue: the interplay between membrane transporters and pH buffers. Hulikova A., Harris AL., Vaughan-Jones RD., Swietach P.
The acid-base balance of cells is related to the concentration of free H⁺ ions. These are highly reactive, and their intracellular concentration must be regulated to avoid detrimental effects to the cell. H⁺ ion dynamics are influenced by binding to chelator substances ('buffering'), and by the production, diffusion and membrane-transport of free H⁺ ions or of the H⁺-bound chelators. Intracellular pH (pHi) regulation aims to balance this system of diffusion-reaction-transport processes at a favourable steady-state pHi. The ability of cells to regulate pHi may set a limit to tissue growth and can be subject to selection pressures. Cancer cells have been postulated to respond favourably to such selection pressures by evolving a better means of pHi regulation. A particularly important feature of tumour pHi regulation is acid-extrusion, which involves H⁺-extrusion and HCO₃⁻-uptake by membrane-bound transporter-proteins. Extracellular CO₂/HCO₃⁻ buffer facilitates these membrane-transport processes. As a mobile pH-buffer, CO₂/HCO₃⁻ protects the extracellular space from excessive acidification that could otherwise inhibit further acid-extrusion. CO₂/HCO₃⁻ also provides substrate for HCO₃⁻-transporters. However, the inherently slow reaction kinetics of CO₂/HCO₃⁻ can be rate-limiting for acid-extrusion. To circumvent this, cells can express extracellular-facing carbonic anhydrase enzymes to accelerate the attainment of equilibrium between CO₂, HCO₃⁻ and H⁺. The acid-extrusion apparatus has been proposed as a target for anti-cancer therapy. The major targets include H⁺ pumps, Na⁺/H⁺ exchangers and carbonic anhydrases. The effectiveness of such therapy will depend on the correct identification of rate-limiting steps in pHi regulation in a specific type of cancer.


If you are not doing physical exercises with the egg, but using it in a conscious way to process emotions and as a tool for connection to self, you can use it as much as you like!
For physical practice we recommend starting with about 10-15 minutes multiple times per week to achieve best results. You can do it every day, just keep in mind that if you’ve never engaged those muscles before they might get sore. Treat yoni egg practice like you would starting a new yoga routine or a new workout routine – best to ease into it and build slowly. However, if you are not feeling any negative effects and are loving the practice, you can practice every day.
We do not advise just placing the egg inside the vagina like you would a tampon and walking around with it without engaging in a formal practice prior. This will not produce positive results, and may even create tension in the pelvic floor.
Do not keep the egg inside for more than 8 hours at a time.


Oyster density, or the number of live oysters per unit area (usually adjusted to per m
2), is a common metric measured to assess reef restoration success. Density can be measured by excavating a sample of known dimensions to a specific depth (e.g., 10-15 cm) using either a quadrat or a core and then counting all the live and⁄or dead oysters (see Figure). Samples can be collected from different reef elevations including the reef crest, slope and base to better understand the spatial variation in oyster abundance. On subtidal reefs density also can be estimated using videography or calibrated dredge samples. Additional data including size frequency distributions and survival rates also can be collected from density samples.
Examples of quadrat sampled (left image) to a known depth (photo from D. Meyer and L. Coen). Excavation often is easiest using a pitchfork (right image) and carefully placing all shell and associated fauna in sturdy plastic bags lining a 20 l bucket (photo from K. Walters).


The COVID-19 outbreak has brought, alongside a major health crisis, dramatic economic shocks to European countries. Governments around the continent are taking different measures to face the pandemic while preserving jobs and incomes (Baldwin and Weder di Mauro 2020). With economic activity far below pre-pandemic levels, many households are still witnessing substantial decreases in their earnings (Adams-Prassl et al, 2020).
In a recent paper (Midoes and Seré 2021), we analyse households’ financial vulnerabilities to an income shock and assesses the degree of protection awarded to employees, in different European countries, by COVID-19 employment protection schemes. The literature has measured financial vulnerability with different approaches, such as possession of financial assets, amounts in savings accounts and access to credit, or by directly asking individuals how confident they are that they could come up with a certain amount of money to face an unexpected need (Lusardi et al. 2011).
In our work, we instead define households as financially vulnerable or not by assessing whether they could cover their usual basic expenditures under a hypothetical shock. For that we analyse whether they could afford food and utilities, rent and mortgages if deprived of their privately earned income,1 resorting instead to a combination of savings and publicly provided income such as pensions, public transfers first, and also COVID-19 unemployment protection.
Our data come from Wave 3 of the ECB Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), conducted in 2017 where we consider seven countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal). Given that the HFCS only covers gross income, we simulate net incomes obtained under the actual COVID-19 unemployment protection schemes enacted by each country through a microsimulation model, EUROMOD.2 Table 1 in the annex provides details on the COVID-19 unemployment benefits simulate
Vulnerability without unemployment protection schemes
For the seven countries of our sample, we estimate that 31.2 million individuals – or 12.8% of their combined population – are financially vulnerable when we consider food and utilities over a three-month horizon, meaning that they would not be able to afford those expenses for three months without privately earned income.3
As Figure 1 shows, both rent and mortgage expenses substantially increase the number of vulnerable individuals. Without privately earned income, 47.2 million, or 19.4% of the population analysed, cannot afford expenses once we add rents and mortgages to their basket. In relative terms, the impact of housing expenses is more severe in countries such as Germany and France – in the former, the percentage of vulnerable individuals jumps from 12.2% to 19.9%; in the latter it doubles from 9.2% to 18.4% - than in Portugal or Italy.
Figure 1 Percentage of vulnerable individuals at a three-month horizon when rent and mortgages are added to basket
Vulnerability under COVID-19 unemployment benefits
By restricting our sample to households where at least one individual has been in employment throughout the previous year, we consider whether households can afford expenses when they are deprived of their salary but are instead receiving COVID-19 unemployment benefits.4
We find that, considering food and utilities only, at the three-month mark the situation is not too dire overall – only 5.9% of affected individuals are vulnerable at this point. As Figure 2 shows, this number hides important country differences – in Italy, 17% of affected individuals are vulnerable. For all countries the situation improves substantially when we add COVID-19 benefits. In Italy, there is a drastic reduction to only 1.13% of vulnerable individuals. While we estimate that 9.6 million people in the countries considered could not afford food and utilities, only 1.7 million would not be able to do so once COVID-19 unemployment benefits are awarded.
Figure 2 Percentage of vulnerable individuals with and without COVID-19 layoff, at a three month-horizon, considering food and utilities
When we consider rent and mortgage as part of basic expenses, the percentage of vulnerable individuals increases to 10.5%. Nonetheless, COVID-19 employment protection benefits reduce the percentage of vulnerable individuals to 2.1%. As Figure 3 shows, the benefits are again quite effective at reducing vulnerabilities across all countries. In Italy, Portugal and Belgium, where vulnerability is highest at baseline, we estimate only 5.0%, 4.2% and 3.7%, respectively, of those affected are vulnerable at the three-month mark. Despite the effectiveness of the scheme, Italy is the country with the highest absolute number of vulnerable individuals, at 969,000. France, where only 0.85% of those affected are vulnerable, nonetheless follows with 360,000.
Figure 3 Percentage of vulnerable individuals with and without COVID-19 layoff, at a three-month horizon, considering food and utilities and rent and mortgages on the main residence
Policy discussion Effects of a more generous COVID-19 unemployment benefit
With the exception of Finland – where the unemployment benefit is a daily fixed amount – the unemployment scheme covers a percentage of salaries, varying from 60% (in Portugal) to 90% (in Austria). By raising the replacement rate to 90%, we observe a reduction of individuals’ vulnerability in all countries. A more noticeable effect is observed in Italy and Portugal, but there are also meaningful reductions in countries with an already extremely low percentage of vulnerable individuals (i.e. in France, Finland and Belgium).
This highlights the fact that the vulnerable individuals identified in our simulations do not come from gaps in coverage generated by our procedure, but from the coverage itself not being sufficient for expenses. The results we now find, where there is an important reduction of vulnerability under a more generous layoff scheme, are a reflection of this. It should be noted that while the performance of Belgium was among the best before considering COVID-19 unemployment benefits, after its consideration, the country only performs better than Italy and Portugal. This is because the Belgian COVID-19 income support is amongst the least generous.
Figure 4 Percentage of vulnerable individuals with the current COVID-19 layoff and with a replacement rate of 90% of salaries, at a three-month horizon, considering food and utilities and housing expenses
Effect of a suspension of rent and mortgages on the main household
In Figure 5a we can see the percentage of vulnerable individuals when we consider expenses on food and utilities, rent and mortgage, at the three-month mark, detailing how much each expense contributes to overall vulnerability. In Germany and Italy, expenses with rent explain a larger part of vulnerability than mortgages. For example, in Italy, the percentage of individuals who would not be able to cover expenses considering food and utilities, rent, and mortgages is 22.3%. This percentage would be reduced by 3.4 percentage points if a rent suspension were enacted. By contrast, it would only be reduced by 1.5 percentage points if instead mortgages were suspended. We observe the opposite in countries such as Belgium and Portugal. In these countries, while rent suspension would only reduce the percentage of vulnerable individuals by 1.6 percentage points and 3.1 percentage points, respectively, mortgages suspension would reduce it by 6 percentage points and 6.4 percentage points, respectively.
When we analyse these policies under a scenario where individuals are receiving the COVID-19 layoff (Figure 5b), in Portugal, rent and mortgage expenditures play a similar role, in Italy rent remains more relevant, and in Belgium mortgages remain more relevant. Rent and mortgage suspensions thus can be an effective support for vulnerable households. In most countries, both under a non-salary scenario and under COVID-19 benefits, mortgages play a more relevant role. Yet, in Italy, rent is more relevant, while in France, they are equally important. This highlights the need to develop country-specific policies for alleviating vulnerability.
Figure 5a Percentage of vulnerable individuals without COVID-19 layoff, at a three-month horizon, considering food and utilities and housing expenses (by component)
Figure 5b Percentage of vulnerable individuals with COVID-19 layoff, at a three-month horizon, considering food and utilities and housing expenses (by component)
Concluding remarks
While we still do not know how long the economic recession induced by the COVID-19 pandemic will last, in this column we atempt to provide evidence on how sensitive individuals are to this type of shock and on the effectiveness of the enacted mitigation policies.
Even with pensions and public transfers, a large number of individuals depend on household privately earned income to cover for their most basic expenses in the very short term – 18.2 million individuals, or 7% of the population of the seven European countries analysed, cannot cover one month of food and utilities by resorting to their deposits, pensions and public transfers. At the three-month horizon, this number increases to 31.2 million, or 13% of the population analysed. We observe a significant drop in the number of vulnerable people when we award them COVID-19 unemployment benefits. By considering net incomes on households of employees, we find significant differences across countries. Employees in Austria, Finland, Belgium and Germany are less vulnerable to a labour income shock than those in Italy and Portugal. The employment protection schemes awarded are extremely effective in decreasing these numbers, particularly in Italy. Rent and mortgage suspensions are more effective in some countries than in others. Countries like Portugal, Belgium and France can achieve an important reduction in their vulnerability through these measures, while in Italy they should be coupled with COVID-19 unemployment benefits to bring about a meaningful reduction.
Two reasons explain why countries like Austria and France perform better than, for example, Portugal. The first is that, in the former two countries, only 2.1% and 2.5%, respectively, receive an income below basic expenses under the scheme, while in Portugal that figure is 12.7%. The difference in the generosity of the support results in a more effective public transfer in the former two countries, just as with non-COVID-19 public transfers. The second reason is the pre-existing differential in savings – French and particularly Austrian households can cover their expenses from deposits alone for a longer period of time.
Countries with wider fiscal space can enact more generous policies. The layoff schemes in Austria and Finland are more generous than the Portuguese. Households in these countries, according to our results, are the most robust to overall income shocks, being able to sustain expenses from deposits alone for longest. These differentials in suffered impact, household finances, and public finances underlie the different perceptions of urgency about the crisis and different eagerness for concerted EU financing of support policies.
References
Adams-Prassi, A, T Boneva, M Golin and C Rauh (2020), “The large and unequal impact of COVID-19 on workers”, VoxEU.org, 8 April.
Anderson, J, E Bergamini, S Brekelmans, A Cameron, Z Darvas, M Domínguez Jíménez and C Midões (2020), “The fiscal response to the economic fallout from the coronavirus”, Bruegel Datasets, last update 6 May.
Baldwin, R, and B Weder di Mauro (eds.) (2020), Mitigating the COVID economic crisis: Act fast and do whatever it takes, VoxEU.org eBook, CEPR.
European Commission (2020). “Policy measures taken against the spread and impact of the coronavirus”.
Kuypers, Sarah et al. (2017). “EWIGE-European Wealth data Integration in EUROMOD”. Tech. rep. JRC Working Papers on Taxation and Structural Reforms.
Midoes, C and Seré, M (2021), “Living with reduced income: an analysis of the household financial vulnerability under COVID-19”.
COVID Economics 63.
Sutherland, Holly (2001),
EUROMOD: An integrated European benefit-tax model. Tech. rep. EUROMOD Working Paper. Annex
Table 1 Additional details on the COVID-19 unemployment benefits simulated
Sources: Anderson et al. (2020) and European Commission (2020). Endnotes
1 By privately earned income, we mean income other than pensions and public transfers. It encompasses salary income, self-employed income, rental income, income from financial assets and regular private transfers.
2 EUROMOD is a static model that calculates country-specific social insurance contributions, income taxation and means-tested cash benefits to obtain market incomes. It simulates cash benefit entitlements and direct tax and social insurance contribution liabilities, on the basis of the tax-benefit rules in place and information available in the underlying datasets (see Sutherland (2001) and Kuypers et al. (2017)).
3 For food expenses we consider average monthly expenditure on food and beverages at home. Utility expenses comprise average monthly expenditure on utilities, specifically electricity, water, gas, TV and internet.
4 It should be noted that besides applying income taxation, in the scenario where individuals are not receiving salaries, they also receive means-tested social benefits to which they would be entitled under reduced income.


Temple Premises Liability Lawyer
Property owners must keep their property reasonably safe for visitors. If you suffered injuries in an accident on someone else’s property, you might have a claim for your damages under premises liability law.
The effort an owner must extend to make premises safe depends on the facts surrounding the incident, which can make establishing liability complicated without legal help. A Temple premises liability could provide invaluable support throughout this process, helping you hold the at-fault landowner accountable for your losses. Contact a dedicated injury attorney at Chad Jones Law to get started.
Reason for Presence Determines Owner Liability
The degree of responsibility an owner bears for an injury depends on why the injured party was on the property to begin with. An experienced Temple attorney could evaluate whether a property owner fulfilled their duty to maintain safe premises in a particular situation or whether the hazard that caused an injury resulted from negligence.
Invitees
An invitee is a customer, potential customer, or patron of a public space. Landowners owe them the highest degree of care. Owners of commercial property and their lessees must keep their premises free of hazards. They must inspect their property regularly and remove any danger they find as quickly as possible. If an immediate remedy not feasible, they must warn customers of the hazard. When property owners fail to take these steps to protect invitees, they could be held legally liable for injuries that result.
Licensees
A licensee is someone with permission to enter a property who does so for reasons other than business. Social guests are licensees. Landowners must warn their guests of hazards they know about that are not clearly visible. Owners need not inspect their property for hazards or make repairs to protect a licensee.
Trespassers
Trespassers enter property without permission, and landowners have no duty to protect adult trespassers from hazards. However, a landowner may not create a hazard with the intent to harm a trespasser.
The law differs in how it treats trespassing children and trespassing adults. If a landowner knows that children could trespass, they must bar access to anything that could be an “attractive nuisance.” Treehouses, trampolines, pools, construction equipment, playsets, sheds, and other artificial conditions could entice a child to enter the property and get hurt. Landowners can be held liable if their property contains an attractive nuisance and a child enters and suffers an injury. A premises liability attorney can further explain these distinctions and their pertinence to cases in Temple.
Incidents That Can Trigger Premises Liability
There are countless property hazards that could lead visitors to become injured. Many lawsuits that proceed on a premises liability theory involve slips or trips at a business or building open to the public. Other situations that a landowner could have responsibility for include:
Elevator accidents Drownings and near-drownings Dog bites and other injuries from domestic animals Injuries from falling objects Burns from fires, steam, or hot surfaces Illnesses resulting from contaminated HVAC systems Health conditions due to exposure to environmental toxins
When a person suffers an accident on someone else’s property, they should report the accident immediately to the owner, the manager, or another person in authority at the site. It is crucial to seek immediate medical treatment even if the injury seems minor—accept ambulance transfer to a hospital if it is offered, and if not, go to an emergency room or urgent care center as soon as possible.
An injured person should consult a Temple attorney immediately after an accident on someone else’s premises. A landowner’s insurer will often approach an injured party within a few days or weeks to offer a quick settlement in return for a promise not to sue. These offers rarely provide adequate compensation for the victim’s injuries. A skilled attorney could handle negotiations with an insurer and pursue a fair settlement.
Rely on an Experienced Temple Premises Liability Attorney
If you were hurt on property that belongs to someone else, you could be facing significant medical bills, lost wages, long-term rehabilitative care, and more. It is crucial to understand that you have legal options.
A Temple premises liability lawyer with Chad Jones Law could hold a negligent property owner accountable and ensure that any settlement provides reasonable compensation. Call today to speak with a knowledgeable local attorney.


Abstract
This commentary discusses Nurmi's account of the relation of “theories” and “models,” and compares it to methodological discussions in economics. I differentiate between two styles of modeling, “theory first” v. “data first,” and argue that Nurmi's recent work falls in the “theory first” category. This implies that models at any level can function as agents of change that may unidirectionally affect models at other levels.


An Exercise in Essentialism, distinguishing the vital few from the trivial many.
The ACES project is now in full swing and over the coming months our teams across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam will be identifying a series of research case studies. Through these case studies we aim to can gain an insight into the development of 21st century skills, competencies, and resilience in students through playful and frugal education practice.
As part of the design and delivery of the case studies, we aim to evaluate frugal education aspects within the learning activities created by our project partners. Insights from the case studies will inform the design and re-designing of new and pre-existing practice, towards delivering more practical, resilient, and sustainable education.
To help identify the various aspects we wish to evaluate, myself and Professor Sylvester Arnab have been developing a collection of playful and frugal aspects respectively, that can be used as indicators of playful and frugal education. This process has allowed me to focus on the existing frugal principles, and their respective considerations, to further rationalise, refine, and consolidate them down from a busy five principles and fifteen
considerations, down to a much more concise three principles and nine aspects. All without loosing anything along the way.
This has been a valuable exercise in taking my own advice. I used the same principles and considerations I had designed for others and essentially reflected them back on themselves. I simplified the overall message for each, removed any obvious, and not-so-obvious, duplication, and stripped the various considerations back to their most essential aspects.
In doing so, I identified a host of valuable practices and processes that I hadn’t clearly or explicitly identified the first time round, but had subconsciously included within the considerations themselves. This was the end result of an exploration of past projects, reliving the design, development, and delivery of each one to tease out what had worked and what hadn’t, and using the valuable insights to further distill the frugal considerations down to their most essential aspects.
This process of reflection and refinement helped me identify the most essential aspects, and in turn, enabled me to further focus my research. Something that I was struggling with, as I think many researchers have a tendency to do. I guess it comes with the territory. 😊
This exercise has also been valuable to the wider project, influencing the direction of our playful aspect design and informing a suite of research instruments we are designing to evaluate playful and frugal aspect within our partner case studies. We have developed a new approach for the mapping of learning, playful, and frugal aspects for developing 21
st century competencies and resilience (a collaboration between myself, Sylvester Arnab Dominic Mahon, and Luca Morini) that we are applying to educational activities designed within the ACES project. We’re writing up a paper on the subject for the European Conference on Games Based Learning 2021.
This has been a challenging but rewarding experience, one I wanted to reflect on for future reference, as I’m sure I’ll find myself navigating these water again some time in the future!


The global digital economy is undergoing a seismic shift as consumer expectations heighten around data privacy and security. As the third-party cookie crumbles, investment in privacy-enabling data management tools will pay dividends in delivering differentiated and personalised customer experiences. In the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, the acceleration of changes in the data privacy landscape has led to greater consumer awareness of data privacy rights.
Navigating the Privacy-Conscious Era
Tealium and Meta’s report highlights the critical role of digital leaders in steering their organisational ship amid the tides of marketplace change. Executives that anticipate the impact of upcoming regulatory changes and future-proof their organisation can capitalise upon the market opportunity that awaits. For example, adopting a customer data platform (CDP) that enables data protection, whilst enriching customer profiles can give companies the competitive edge through building CX innovation capability. This is especially important as brands brace for a cookieless future amid an increasing volume of online consumers.
In Australia, 83% of consumers have expressed concerns over cookies that monitor their online activity for targeted marketing. Coupled with scepticism of inauthentic experiences and an increasing demand for omnichannel personalisation, consumers now expect seamless and tailored experiences at every touchpoint throughout their buying journey. Data is central to the creation of hyper-personalised and frictionless experiences, so it’s vital that companies earn the trust essential to first-party data acquisition to meet their customers’ personalisation expectations.
Marie-Louise Dalton, Vice President of Marketing, Asia-Pacific and Japan at Tealium confirms, ‘As brands rely more heavily on first-party data in their marketing strategies, establishing a trusted value exchange with consumers will be more important than ever.’
The encouraging news for brands is that consumers display a high willingness to share their data to receive customised and timely experiences in exchange. The ball is now in a brand’s court to protect the data entrusted to them, in order to continually innovate and elevate the customer experience.
Importantly, privacy and personalisation do not have to be at odds. Approaching personalisation with a privacy-first mindset is the gateway to the future of customer experience.
Technology-Enabled CX Innovation
Adopting a best-of-breed technology stack is central to powering data-driven CX innovation. This is where Tealium’s trusted CDP, in conjunction with Meta’s Conversions API, can enable companies to streamline data from multiple sources within a single secure location to stitch together a unified customer view. Companies can then activate enriched customer profiles in real time to deliver meaningful and timely experiences.
Well-known Australian internet service provider, Dodo, worked with Tealium CDP and Meta’s Conversions API to improve its campaign measurement and performance. With the right technology infrastructure, Dodo achieved a notable 26% increase in sales and 23% higher conversion rate.
Nadia Tan, Director of Business Ecosystem Partnerships for Asia-Pacific at Meta, states ‘We understand that businesses are dealing with various challenges, including the decline in online performance and difficulties in attribution; businesses need to strike a balance between driving performance, while respecting people’s privacy.’
Shifting to a First-Party Data Strategy
Companies that invest in a CDP-enabled first-party data strategy will be those that lead their industries into a new era of privacy and personalisation.
Accenture Interactive surveyed 8,000+ consumers globally in 2021, and found that nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents indicated a willingness to share personal information if brands were transparent about how it is used. Transparency is key to delivering a trusted value exchange between the brand and the consumer.
Tealium and Meta’s report recommends five key actions that companies can take to establish a privacy-compliant data collection and management strategy:
To delve deeper into privacy-first CX innovation, read Tealium and Meta’s report, ‘Privacy and Personalisation: A Balancing Act to Innovate the Customer Experience’.


Parents who received advanced Child Tax Credit payments last year are receiving letters from the Internal Revenue Service, urging them to use Form 6419, which is part of the advanced Child Tax Credit program. In a statement released Monday, the agency stated that some of the mailings may include erroneous information.
Given that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is recommending people to exercise particular caution this year to ensure that their tax filings are accurate, the incorrect information might have a significant impact on some families’ finances.
An estimated 6 million individual tax returns were filed in 2021, and many of those were flagged for review because taxpayers failed to report how much they received in government stimulus payments or other tax credits. The IRS is still working to clear the backlog, which currently stands at 6 million.
A tax refund is frequently the largest check that a family receives each year, with payouts in 2021 averaging approximately $2,800 on average per family. This implies that if a family fails to declare the amount they got in their advanced CTC payments, they could face serious consequences.
If there is a snag in the IRS’s processing, refunds could be delayed for several weeks or even several months.
The Internal Revenue Service said it is unclear how many people received erroneous letters, but it is possible that a small group of taxpayers who moved or changed bank accounts in December were among those who received them.
In certain instances, CTC checks may have been returned as undeliverable, or the direct deposits may have bounced from the bank where the account had been terminated, according to Ken Corbin, the IRS’s top taxpayer experience officer, who spoke with reporters on Monday during a conference call.
In that case, Corbin cautioned, “the mailings may not reflect what the taxpayer actually got.”
According to him, taxpayers who are concerned that their letter from the IRS is incorrect should check IRS.gov and log into their account through the site, which is available 24/7. It is his understanding that the IRS.gov website will have the correct information that the taxpayer should utilize on their tax return.
In order to complete an appropriate return, Corbin added, “we want taxpayers to have the information they need.”
Website for the Child Tax Credit has been launched.
As part of its redesigned website, the federal government on Monday made it easier for people who were eligible for the enhanced child tax credit to collect the second half of the money they were entitled to.
According to the Treasury Department, the site, ChildTaxCredit.gov, includes a new tool that connects people to filing alternatives, eligibility information, and directions on how to claim the tax credit for qualifying children. The support will be available in a variety of languages, both virtually and in person.
“It’s been a very stressful filing season.”
According to IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig, the potentially erroneous letters might make for “a very stressful filing season” for both individuals and tax preparers, which he warned could occur. He also asked taxpayers to follow these suggestions to guarantee that their returns are processed as efficiently as possible:
1. Submit your paperwork electronically.
2. File as soon as possible once the Internal Revenue Service begins taking tax returns on January 24.
3. Make a request for a direct deposit.
“If taxpayers require a refund in a short period of time, we strongly advise them not to submit on paper,” Rettig added.
It is possible to incur “expensive delays” if you file an erroneous return, such as by guessing how much you earned from the advanced CTC payments, according to the IRS.
According to the IRS, if people follow this guidance and their tax returns do not contain any red flags, they should receive their refund within 21 days of filing their returns.
When asked how long it might take to receive a refund if, for example, someone files on paper or makes a mistake on their tax return, Corbin responded, “Right now, we’re not really sure.”
It is critical to report accurate data regarding the advanced CTC payments because the enhanced tax credit was paid in two installments: half in advance and the other half through taxpayer refunds when they complete their 2021 tax returns.
For example, families with children under the age of six are eligible for tax credits totaling $3,600, with $1,800 paid in monthly installments from July 2021 through December 2021 for each child under the age of six.
The remaining $1,800 will be claimed on their tax return for the year 2021. A family who mistakenly states they received $1,500 in CTC payments last year and then claims $2,100 on their tax return — more than they are entitled to — will have their return flagged for investigation by the IRS, which will result in a longer wait for their refund.
Mr. Corbin believes the incorrect letters were delivered to a small group of taxpayers rather than to millions of parents, as had been reported. “The IRS.gov website is correct, and we advise people to double-check it,” he said.


Join Us for a Brown Bag WELA Event! Thursday, February 10, 2022 | 12:00 – 1:00 PM | Via Zoom
Lien in, because this is big news. On April 16th, 2021, Washington State signed into law the Washington Wage Recovery Act, effective January 1st, 2022. This bill greatly improves the position of employees in securing their rightfully earned wages from employers. Washington state employees can now place a lien on their employer’s property as security while pursuing unpaid wages.
Beau Haynes has been an attorney with the Washington Wage Claim Project since 2015. He has litigated wage and hour cases primarily involving immigrant workers since graduating from law school at the University of Washington in 2011, where he was a Laurel Rubin intern with Columbia Legal Services, as well as a Peggy Browning fellow with the National Employment Law Project in Seattle. A significant portion of his current practice includes bringing laborer lien claims against property owners for unpaid wages for work on construction projects. Andrea Schmitt has been a Staff Attorney at Columbia Legal Services for 13 years. She has spent most of her legal career litigating and pursuing legislative and administrative change for farmworkers and other immigrant workers. Her advocacy has included supporting Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farmworker union founded by indigenous families in the Skagit Valley, since its inception in 2013. She is an alum of the University of Washington Law School, and after law school, she clerked for the Hon. Susan Owens of the Washington State Supreme Court. Andrea and her colleagues at CLS, including attorney Sarah Leyrer, who was killed in a tragic accident in 2020, were the original authors of and principal advocates for the bill that established the new wage lien law.
There is no cost to attend this CLE.
1 CLE Credit


I am an image consultant and mentor. My practice, “Conscious Beauty,” creates an experience of joyful radiance that occurs as we become more kind, compassionate and accepting of all the parts of ourselves. By softening the voice of your inner critic, I can guide you to shift your perception of yourself inside and out.
Tapping Conscious Beauty Coaching is a self-loving journey of embracing your deepest beauty.
As a makeup and hair stylist, I am always moved by the powerful inner shifts I observe after my clients' hair has been cut or colored, or after a new make-up application. When they experience themselves differently — I can feel their awakening.
In the time of Covid-19, our rituals of self-care have been dramatically altered. The nurturing salon experience of receiving undivided attention can be soul nourishing and provides a tangible sense of calm. For so many of us, we are deeply missing this. However, there is a way we can create self-affirming and healing rituals that melt away many of our stressors. We can begin this reclamation when we slow down, breathe and renew.
By combining my creativity, training and intuition, I have observed and benefited from the power of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) "Tapping" - an energy shifting method I use to diffuse stress and negative perceptions that block the experience of beauty and joy.
Let's create beauty and inner peace together.


E3 in collaboration with a world class team has released a study, “Assessing the business case for rural solar microgrids in India: a case study approach“, funded by a USTDA grant in support of Azure Power, a private solar power developer based in India. E3 was awarded the grant through a competitive process. The project developed the technical and business solutions for AC-based microgrids, using two Indian villages (Bar in Chhattisgarh and Devari Bharat in Uttar Pradesh) as case studies, and presents recommendations and conditions necessary to scale up microgrid solutions more broadly across rural India.
The study was led by Dr. Priya Sreedharan of E3 in collaboration with Humboldt State University’s Schatz Energy Research Center, Black and Veatch USA and India, Varesh Energy, Dr. Chris Greacen, Christopher Freitas, and Ranjit Deshmukh. Contributing authors include E3’s Ryan Jones, Michele Chait, Dr. Fritz Kahrl and Snuller Price; Black and Veatch’s Jagmeet Khangura and Atul Garg; Humboldt State University’s Richard Engel, Brendon Mendonca, Tom Quetchenbach, Meg Harper and Dr. Arne Jacobson; Varesh’s Shobhit Goel and Varun Aggarwal.


Finding New Connections to Compassion — Dr. Mickey SchindlerDirector, MARVA
Over the past year and a half, we all retreated inwards. New connections were rare.
But during this time, we met David, a man in his early 60’s experiencing significant cognitive decline, living alone and unable to take care of his basic needs. His caregiver, Sarah, contacted us, as she too is getting older and struggling to take care of David but is deeply committed to his wellbeing.
Sarah is not David’s relative, but is acutely aware that he has no one else in the world to look after him. Her sense of compassion is not an isolated act of kindness —
dozens of individuals reached out to MARVA during this period out of concern for neighbors, acquaintances and strangers who needed help. We are inspired by their dedication and initiative.
Recently, we met via Zoom with social workers and other professionals working with Alzheimer’s and dementia patients in East Jerusalem, as part of MARVA’s efforts to reach diverse populations in communities across Israel. Not only did this take place during the pandemic, but also amid spiraling tensions around the time of the war in May. Being part of this group of diverse individuals — Jews, Christians and Muslims — all united by common vision to help elderly residents of East Jerusalem was remarkable and motivates us to seek further connections across Israel.


Related Faculty
Theo Vermaelen
Professor of Finance
Keywords
Corporate Governance; Value Creation, Strategy and Implementation
Journal Article
An Innovative Approach to Funding CSR Projects Harvard Business Review, 89(6), pp. 28.
Corporate social responsibility remains a deeply controversial issue in business circles. Critics argue that CEOs who want to support social initiatives should use their own money, not that of shareholders. In their view, CSR is a stealth tax that starves the value-creation process of capital. If we want to redistribute wealth, they say, let’s wait until the wealth has been created.


IASC Guidelines on working with youth during humanitarian crisis
On Tuesday 16 February, the virtual launch of the IASC-endorsed guidelines “With Us and For Us: IASC Guidelines on Working with and for Young People in Humanitarian Emergencies and Protracted Crises” took place. Organized by UNICEF and NRC amongst others, the launch included speakers from the UN, member states and donors, and of course young people.
During this event, the guidelines were launched, an interactive dialogue with youth was held and different stakeholders announced their commitments. Tijmen Rooseboom, the Netherlands’ Ambassador for Youth, Education and Work indicated: “‘With Us and For Us’ translates for the Netherlands into ‘putting the Youth at Heart’ of our international cooperation.” Tijmen emphasized the Youth at Heart strategy, which focuses on bridging the gap between the skills young people learn and the job market. This also goes for the Prospects Partnership, enabling young people in a humanitarian context to realize their potential.
Furthermore, Tijmen stated that we should no longer talk about the prospects of young people, without ensuring their meaningful participation. “As the Netherlands we are committed to increasingly put the challenges and opportunities of young people at the heart of our international cooperation, with young people as partners. That is why we support our international and humanitarian partners to implement these guidelines.” Agents of change
Many young people also shared their views: Nujeen Mustafa, a young Syrian refugee and disability rights activist, told us: “If you create a space for me, I will shine.” And Valentina Buanco H., a human rights activist from Argentina, stated that young people are not passive recipients of aid, but can successfully contribute. “The contribution young people make to social change is huge. We need leaders who trust us, include us and invest in us.”
Commitments from stakeholders included, amongst others, the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, who stressed that youth are not victims or threats, “but agents of change.” Henrietta Fore from UNICEF said that “it’s about giving young people power and trust them.”
During this event humanitarian actors and donors committed to the implementation of these guidelines and emphasized the critical need to provide space for young people to ensure their meaningful participation.


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Kigali, Rwanda “ Our project will actively engage residents in ongoing informal settlements upgrading projects, helping them to leverage green technology to harvest rainwater as an alternative source to meet their daily water needs in addition to providing them with smart waste management facilities." Mayor Pudence Rubingisa Improving sanitation and water quality
Residents living in Kigali’s informal settlements are burdened by the compounding challenges of unsanitary water, sanitation, and hygiene services, as well as disproportionately high costs of maintaining these utilities. In response, the city is introducing a comprehensive solution that utilizes Dutch innovations on stormwater capture and flood mitigation, and introduces smart waste-sensor technologies in the new context of informal settlements. The system reduces residents’ dependency on commercial water and keeps solid waste from polluting the water supply, decreasing the municipality's spending on costly infrastructure repairs after a flood.


A reflection on my learning experience has suggested that motivation should come first at the beginning of the learning journey to help learners actively participate in the learning process. Motivation can be derived from materialistic awards initially, and teachers should make the most of these to activate students’ interest and sustain it for the entire learning journey.


This PWC report presents a framework for helping a city or region decide which event to host, based on key questions under the categories of overall readiness, venues, legacy, supporting infrastructure and intellectual capital. It explores a number of key aspects on hosting sports event, including ways in which a city or region can maximise the impact of hosting events.
Introduction
"The appeal of marquee sports mega-events such as the Olympics and football's FIFA World Cup
TM is undeniable. Cities the world over jockey to host these high-profile events, undeterred by the substantial costs, extensive planning, and inflexible timelines.
"What motivates the fierce competition to host these events? Are the risks worth the rewards? In fact, these marquee global events do possess inherently singular features that are not easily replicated:
Their attendant deadlines mandate discipline and commitment. They offer rare opportunities for positioning in the spotlight of intense media attention. They necessitate collaboration between the various levels of government. They require the public and private sectors to cooperate. They mobilize national pride toward a common goal. They celebrate human achievement."


Snapshot A 29-year-old G1P0 woman at 30 weeks pregnancy presents to her dermatologist for a rash that started on her abdomen. She reports having significant itch with this rash. She denies any new cosmetic or medication exposures in the past few months. Her pregnancy is otherwise healthy, without complications. On physical exam, she has multiple edematous pink papules and plaques on her abdomen without scale. There is one tense intact bulla noted on the left lower abdomen. A biopsy is done and sent for histology and direct immunofluorescence, which shows a subepidermal split. Introduction Overview pemphigoid gestationis, also known as herpes gestationis, is an autoimmune bullous dermatosis that occurs during the second or third trimester of pregnancy, or in the immediate postpartum period treatment is usually oral corticosteroids Associated conditions thyroid disease, particularly Graves disease premature birth Epidemiology Incidence 1 in 50,000 pregnancies Demographics pregnant women Risk factors associated with HLA-DR3 and HLA-DR4 history of pemphigoid gestationis with previous pregnancies ETIOLOGY Pathogenesis mechanism antibody to BPAG2, a component of the hemidesmosome BPAG2 is also known as BP180 it is unclear why antibodies form hypotheses include cross-reactivity between placental tissue and the skin Presentation Symptoms periumbilical rash that progresses to tense bullae significant pruritus flares with delivery of neonate Physical exam inspection edematous pink urticaria-like papules and plaques tense vesicles or bulla spares mucous membranes Studies Histology dermal edema subepidermal bullae eosinophils Direct immunofluorescence (DIF) linear C3 (some with IgG) deposition at the basement membrane Differential Polymorphic eruption of pregnancy key distinguishing factors may also present with pruritic urticarial papules and plaques on the abdomen, but will not progress to bullae DIF is negative Treatment Medical oral corticosteroids indications symptomatic relief typically, topical corticosteroids are not effective Complications Fetal risk increased risk of premature birth Prognosis Good May resolve spontaneously after delivery


Steven Kowalik will always remember the support he received as a student at Wayne State University. “I wouldn’t be who I am today without the assistance I got from Wayne State,” he said.
In addition to receiving financial assistance, Kowalik was supported by faculty members, especially as a graduate student. He was struggling to complete his final semester due to challenges in his personal life. Kowalik thought he would have to drop out, but the department chair offered him an extension to complete his remaining coursework over the summer. Kowalik said, “His willingness to give me a break motivated me to finish. His work on my behalf to help me succeed has stuck with me.”
When Kowalik was making his estate plans, he wanted to give back and provide students with that same kind of support. He has included Wayne State in his will and plans to create the Steven P. Kowalik Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Intersex (LGBTQI) Endowed Scholarship. Kowalik is a member of the LGBTQI community, and his scholarship will support students who advocate for that community’s concerns.
Kowalik decided to make a planned gift instead of a cash gift to ensure he will be financially secure in his retirement. But he fully expects there will be money left over in his estate to support his scholarship. “I firmly believe I can live comfortably and do the things I want and give back,” he said.
Kowalik’s advice to current students is to ask for help when they need it. “You shouldn’t hesitate to ask for assistance from your instructor or the chair of the department,” he said. “Don’t drop out because of personal or financial reasons. There’s probably someone who can help you through life’s rough patches.”